How to paint feathers

How to paint feathers digital painting tutorial and technique. This is a quick art video tutorial method for concept art along with step by step how to images. This tutorial is not a refine or finish illustration of painting crisp and realistic feather by any mean. I am trying to show you a quick way of convey a specific material, feathers. It is very similar to how I paint fur from the previous tutorial, how to paint fur on a Mongol warrior armor. But fur is a bit more refine and has a lot more soft edge.
I basically start off with just a silhouette of random spikes in size and shape. I was just trying to paint over one of my rough concept from 2007, the Raven girl. Then her armor or costume has a lot of feathers so I thought it would be good to do a quick video tutorial on how to paint feathers, again concept art way. Then I just pick the color and value from the back ground then using 20% opacity and gently paint more shapes to separate each layer of feather. Once I get the mix value of the base of the feathers, then I use 80-100% to paint over the big silhouette. I try to define a few feathers at time. Rather than focus on making each individual one to look like feather, I focus on the over all shape, value and edge. As seen below in the step by step images. It would be a lot easier to understand when you watch the digital painting video tutorial below.

About Xia Taptara

Xia Taptara (黃曉聲 Huang XiaoShēng), currently a freelance concept artist for games and films, formerly a character concept artist for ArenaNet/NCsoft (GuildWars & Guildwars 2). I also work on various projects for Game of Thrones, Square-Enix, Paizo Publishing, Fantasy Fight Games, Disney Interactive, and many publishers & clients. I use Wacom Tablet Intuos and Photoshop CS2,3,4,5 to do most of my professional art work. I use pencil, pen, and traditional medium in my free time. I founded IdrawGirls.com (TheArtClasses.com) in 2007 to motivate myself to create more and better art. Also I get to draw and paint whatever the hell I want to. Hopefully I can inspired some young soul and old soul alike.
*QUESTIONS & COMMENT:
PLEASE POST THEM ON THE BLOG.
Or CONTACT ME via idrawgirls Facebook page. DO NOT E-MAIL ME. Thank you. ;-)